Arizona, baby!
by AndShadowsWatchingOverMe
Summary: Before starting a life of a bounty hunter by Ano's side, Arizona was a self-proclaimed prankster queen of Freeside. Now she's looking for something more. A short prequel for the Anonymous Bounty Hunter, but Arizona is the only link between the two. No need to read them both to understand the other. Rated T for language, otherwise harmless.


**Author's note:**_ While my beta is doing good job with checking my horrible writing with the other fic, I thought I'd kill my spare time by writing something short. And what would be a better way to waste my valuable time than showing some love to Arizona. Hey, if Ano could have her own short fics then why not Arizona? _

_ Rated T for language. Don't worry your little heads with the typos, I was being lazy (don't kill me!)_

* * *

"Who the fuck did that?!"

The whole Atomic Wrangler was deadly silent after the yell of a lonely individual whose pants had just recently combusted while they were still on him. He was a rather amusing sight to behold but no-one dared to say a word. His rage-red eyes told that the next smart mouth would pay with his life.

_"Who the fuck was it?!" _he nearly screamed.

The customers of the Wrangler were squeamish on their seats as the drunken man started to search for a scapegoat from amongst them.

He didn't see a small figure slip out of the bar and into the chilly night of the Freeside.

The girl had a smile plastered on her face and she was trembling with the laughter she didn't dare to let out, not just yet. A few more steps and she'd be out of the hearing range. A few more steps.

She couldn't take it anymore. She fell on the ground, giggling like a crazy person, rolling around in the dirt and holding her stomach.

"That was priceless!" she laughed into the silence of the night. "That look on his face! Oh my God!"

The laughter died on her lips when she heard the door open and the man whose pants were nothing but charred strips was staring at her furiously.

"Imma kill you, you little bitch!"

"Whoops", she muttered and got up. "So you actually think that you'll be able to catch me?"

Not feeling like waiting to see what the man was going to answer, she got to her feet and started running. The drunken dude followed her for a while but at some point he must've stumbled and that was when the girl lost him. She climbed over some rubble and crawled into her little hiding place in a deserted house. No man his size would be able to follow unless they had an atomic bomb in their backpocket. And after burning down his trousers, she was pretty sure there was none on him.

"Hah! This thing is super!" she squealed holding a bottle filled with a transparent liquid. She'd bought the recipe from Mick & Ralph's a couple of days ago and had been dying to try it on someone. And it worked like a dream.

"Too bad no-one's here to celebrate with me", she muttered to herself.

Her name was Arizona and she was the self-proclaimed queen of mischief in Freeside. The strangers had better to watch their backs around her that was for sure. But the locals were pretty safe, at least the nice ones.

"Okay-dokey. Let's mark that up as a success", she muttered and scribbled a little smiley face next to a list of things to do. So far it read:

Get job, u lzy bich

Get gun :)

Get 1,000,000,000 caps

Test that thingy the liqvid shit :)

Get a kickass sidekik

Two out of three. Not bad for a twelve-year-old. She played around with the freshly bought plasma defender in her hands. She should probably start practicing with it. Yep, that was a good idea. The BB-gun she'd had before was nothing like this one. She should think of a name to it as well. All cool weapons had names. Something dangerous. Something glorifying. Something feminine.

Nah. She'd have time to think about it later. She should think about her list of things to do for now.

Should she go and try to find a job? The thought didn't excite her but how else was she going to get 1,000,000,000 caps? She couldn't go and rob the casinos of New Vegas, now could she? But there wasn't really anything she could think of. No-one in their right mind would hire a kid with a shiny gun, no. She was too short.

"Bah! Life is too short!" she yelled to no-one.

She was going to need a sidekick. A strong one. But shorter than her, she didn't want her follower to steal all the attention from her. Maybe an animal. A trained gecko would be cool. They'd give jobs to people with trained geckos, right?

Maybe she should go out again, tomorrow, Arizona thought. Yeah. Go out in the wastes, do some more scavenging. There was good money in scavenging, right? That was how she'd got the caps to her glorious plasma defender. Yes. She should head out again. Maybe even further this time, she had protection now.

But then again, why wait, her mind told her. It's not like you're gonna sleep anyway, you night owl!

"Yeah. Imma leave now", she decided and threw her scarce supplies into an old duffle bag. Then she crawled back out of her hiding place. The night was almost over as she headed out of Freeside. At the north gate she heard two Kings talking together.

"Yea. I heard that the Courier wiped that shithole clean of the monsters."

"Sure he did. He's got a fine aim, that guy. And a fine lady friend."

"Oh yeah, I kinda wish that pussycat would wear something else than those robes."

"Mm-hm. I hear you man. But anyways, I heard there's good loot in Divide."

Arizona stopped in her tracks and gave a questioning look for the duo. They paid no mind to her.

"But you'd hafta be bat-shit crazy to go there."

"I thought the place was clean!"

"Naw, man. The creatures crawl back once the predator is gone, dig?"

"Hey! Stop eavesdropping, brat!"

"Fuck you!" Arizona shouted and showed them her tongue. The Kings chuckled at her but shooed her off. If she'd had a trained gecko, they wouldn't dare to do that, she thought to herself.

But Divide, they say. Good loot was always good loot. But even the prankster queen of Freeside needed to learn some new tricks before she'd poke her head into that cazador nest.


End file.
